


The Cave

by cardinalrachelieu



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, aka the one where nesta realizes cassian's not All That Bad, cuddling for survival and all that nonsense, underwater cave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalrachelieu/pseuds/cardinalrachelieu
Summary: “I can’t swim!” she yells, enraged and terrified all at once—humiliated that he’s put her in a situation where she has to admit she’s unprepared.“Experience is the best teacher,” he replies, quickly wrapping her in his arms before jumping both of them into the teal-blue water below their low-flying craft.She clings to him tightly in those first few chaotic moments after hitting the waves, unsure of how to move her own limbs to keep afloat. She figures it out soon enough, but then he’s grabbing her hand and telling her to take a deep breath, and Nesta tries to shout at him but then they’re going down, down, down toward coral and rocks and the bottom of the ocean.





	

“I can’t swim!” she yells, enraged and terrified all at once—humiliated that he’s put her in a situation where she has to admit she’s unprepared.

“Experience is the best teacher,” he replies, quickly wrapping her in his arms before jumping both of them into the teal-blue water below their low-flying craft.

She clings to him tightly in those first few chaotic moments after hitting the waves, unsure of how to move her own limbs to keep afloat. She figures it out soon enough, but then he’s grabbing her hand and telling her to take a deep breath, and Nesta tries to shout at him but then they’re going down, down, down toward coral and rocks and the _bottom of the ocean._

A scream builds and dies in her throat, some instinct overriding the noise and keeping her mouth shut.

Then there’s the gaping maw of a tunnel getting ready to swallow them whole, and Cassian is leading them straight into it. She feebly tries to fight against him, but he’s strong and sure and a much, much better swimmer. Blackness is crowding her vision just as her head breaches the surface, and she can’t find the words to yell at him as she tries to center herself again, hungrily pulling oxygen into her aching lungs.

It’s dark and cramped and there’s no shore, no plateau, anywhere in sight. Divots line the cave wall, and so Nesta digs her fingers into several of them to steady herself. The water’s freezing, and she bites out a curse at the pig-headed ruffian floating next to her, resigning herself to this temporary prison.

Maybe he’d saved them, or maybe he’d just done it to piss her off. She couldn’t decide. Either way, she didn’t see a reason to speak to him for the time being. Or ever again.

 

* * *

 

She groans and flexes her hands, grimacing when she repositions her fingers only to see blood dripping from her palm where the jagged rock face had apparently cut into it.

The fourth time she does this—each interval between Nesta’s poorly disguised shuffling about shortening in duration—Cassian finally mutters, “Just hang on to me.”

She scoffs, backs farther away—which amounts to mere inches since the cave is barely two meters each direction and she’s already positioned herself as opposite Cassian as possible—and suffers for another ten minutes before silently, proudly dragging herself over to him. The smirk he gives her doesn’t smart like his normal ones, doesn’t reek of pride or arrogance.

She’s not sure what to make of it.

Cassian tries to help guide her legs around his waist, but his efforts are met with a swat and a growl. He lifts up the hand he’s not using to anchor himself to the wall in surrender and lets Nesta figure the rest out herself, turning his head away so she doesn’t get any ideas about other parts of him she could slap.

The second her body is pressed against his, she feels it. The warmth. It leaks out of him, staining her chilled skin, and it feels so, _so_ good to rest, to not be working her arms and legs anymore.

The moment of peace she promised herself stretches to two. And then three. And then she’s losing count of how long she’s been clinging to him, but her eyes are heavy and her mind is falling silent, and he is so very, very warm.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't remember when she dozed off, but she wakes to his free arm tight around her waist and her cheek resting against the space between his neck and shoulder. She can feel the tension in his muscles, the strangled huff he makes every time he kicks his legs, the slight tremble that creeps through him every time he flexes in an attempt to keep their heads above water, and she wonders just how long he's been supporting them both while she slept.

Irritation, hot and sharp like lightning, shoots through her, and she shoves away from him, returning to her spot against the cratered wall she knows will tear her moisture-soaked fingertips to shreds, and then she sees Cassian’s own hands…

He shifts them, every tendon stretching to its fullest before he makes a tight fist, and then again. It’s impossible not to notice the pinked, blistering patches from where that hand had been connected to the wall, impossible not to notice the grimace he makes when the raw skin touches the salty sea around them.

He’s good at hiding it normally—the pain he constantly feels, constantly endures. She’d inadvertently glimpsed his bare back while it had still been healing, seen the rippled swirls of new, still-knitting flesh, noticed the way he’d held his breath every time one of the others had needed to touch him directly to apply the salve.

And yet he doesn’t hide—or is perhaps too exhausted to hide—the distinctive facial twitch as it pull his lips to the side until the discomfort has passed, and then he’s well on his way to wearing down the pads of his other fingers.

"You didn't have to do that," she says, and she's almost angry that someone who she can barely stand was willing to endure that level of pain just so she could relax for a few moments. It made her feel like she owed him for the kindness, and Nesta didn’t enjoy feeling like she owed anyone, for anything.

"You were tired." His breathing has returned to something close to normal and there's an ease in the words that makes her feel a little less indebted, a little less defensive.

Judging by the faint golden glow coming from below them, the sun’s still high in the sky outside, which means it’ll be at least another several hours until the tide again retreats to the heart of the ocean and they can swim free.

Nesta had wanted to throttle Cassian for leading them in here earlier—and she likely would have if her lungs hadn’t been trying to rupture right out of her chest during their swim through the never-ending tunnel that led to the cavern. But his actions, as much as she hated to admit it, had probably been very thing that prevented the mercenaries from catching them and hauling them off.

So, for the time being, they were both stuck treading water or bracing against the jagged cave walls as best they could. The space wasn’t large enough to put any real distance between them—a meter, at best—but it also wasn’t small enough that Nesta could stretch her legs from one wall to the other and give her tired arms and raw hands a break.

Cassian didn’t look to be faring any better, alternating his hand and foot holds every couple of minutes to roll the fatigued, too-stiff joints. The real tell that he was suffering was his complete silence. Normally he couldn’t be convinced to shut up, not for all the joy in the Quad. But now… now he’s silent as a wraith and the icy chill she feels in her own bones appears to have seeped into his, too. There’s a pallor to his skin she’s never seen before, so unlike the warm, tanned glow she’s used to.

It'll be another several hours yet before they’ll be able to make it to open water, Nesta realizes. The water levels will begin to drop around dusk, and the fact that she can still see Cassian’s rugged features tell her that’s a while off still.

 

* * *

 

She kicks softer, trying to conserve energy, thinking each flick of her ankle with actually break the bones with how they sing their protest all the way up the shaft of her leg. Her arms aren’t doing much better, either, limp and numb and burning and trembling.

So she doesn’t bother refusing him the second time he notices her fighting for purchase. She barely has it in her to grit her teeth when he stretches out his arm toward her, can’t bring herself to grumble something harsh before she glides over and wraps herself around him again.

"Aren't you tired?" she mumbles, teeth close to chattering from the chill burying itself in her toes, in her fingers, in her core. She'd never realized the ocean could be so cold... or that Cassian could be so warm.

"Exhausted," he breathes, but there's a grin on his face as he slides his free arm around her waist and tugs her closer.

She has half a mind to push away again but her muscles are spent, and maybe, she thinks, Cassian isn't as awful as she once believed. She'd be lying if she pretended there wasn't a part of her that was beginning to like the feel of his skin against hers, the way his arm would tense every time hers slackened, the scent of him—fire and warmth and cinnamon—even despite the salty air and icy water surrounding them.

So she readjusts her grip and tilts her head so it can rest in that space just under his chin, the space she’d discovered earlier sometime between desperately agreeing to let him support her and waking to find she’d actually been quite comfortable in his embrace.

It's another hour or two before the water's finally receded enough for them to swim their way out, and Nesta remains latched onto him the entire time. She finds her hands rubbing tight, soothing circles against the muscles in his shoulders—an unspoken show of gratitude for what he’s sacrificing. She doesn’t consider herself heavy by any means, but any burden, no matter how light, must feel like a container of lead bricks after such a long time.

He doesn’t say anything, and so she doesn’t either. Occasionally she’ll locate a particularly overtaxed muscle group and he’ll move his neck so it brushes against her forehead. She can’t tell if he likes the pressure, but the action reminds her of a cat arching into someone’s touch, and so she always continues until the knot disappears. Whether or not she’s actually helping remains to be seen, but Cassian’s not complaining, and she feels like it’s the least she can do. Gods know she won’t actually thank him—not when he got them both into this mess in the first place—but this she can do. This she _will_ do.

 

* * *

 

She almost wants to ignore him when Cassian deems it time for them to make a break for it because it means he's going to let go of her. It means they're going to return to the real world, and maybe everything that happened this afternoon will evaporate just like a bubbling patch of seafoam, and she’s not sure why the idea of things returning to normal bothers her, but it does.

Exhaustion is a demanding beast, though, and there's no way either of them could make it another half-day without fresh water, so she unhooks her ankles from where they’d been secured around his waist and prepares for the trip back through the tunnel.

“You ready?” he croaks, and she hadn’t realized until hearing his voice just how tired he was, just how much he’d depleted his own energy stores over the past several hours.

 _No_ , she wants to say. She’ll never be ready for the feeling of the ocean surrounding her, suffocating her, but it’s the only way out, and he’s already taken her hand in his. So instead she nods, clenching her teeth as she purges her lungs one last time before filling them, fully, with oxygen and letting Cassian drag her under.

She’s more prepared this time, for the swim. She tries not to count the seconds in her head, but it’s better than some of the alternative thoughts that try to take root in her consciousness. It’s nearly a minute, though it feels like ten, before they surface, corals of all shapes and sizes glowing orange and blue-green not even five meters below their tired, still kicking feet.

She’s gotten better at staying afloat, having had hours to practice the mechanics of it, though everything below her knees feels like it might fall off it she uses her legs much more.

Cassian holds onto her for just a moment too long, and Nesta only notices the extended contact because of the way he abruptly yanks his hand back, like he’s been burned. And then, with the reef below them and the cave behind them, they begin their short swim back to land.

Rhys is the one to find them stumbling ashore, and he's walking that razor-thin edge between wildness and perfect calm. He pulls Cassian into a desperate, crushing hug, soaking his own clothes through with how close he holds the dark-haired brute. And then it’s over, both men leashing their emotions, and Nesta thinks the display of affection too closely resembles the way she outwardly cares for Elain sometimes. She’s not sure what to make of the realization.

 

* * *

 

They don't talk about what happened that day in the cave—ever. Not even once. But… something's different.

Cassian still pushes every button she owns, but there's always a tenderness in his eyes behind all the quips and teasing and so she can't bring herself to be mad about it... not really.

Not when she's seen the gentle, caring man underneath the too loud, too aggressive, too hard mask he wears, much like the scaled armor now covering his broad chest.

And so she's not surprised when their fight (if it can even be called that; it’s mostly just yelling about nothing because she likes the way his voice sounds when there’s passion behind the words) turns into their lips colliding.

Once again she finds herself wrapping her legs around Cassian's waist, but this time she's determined not to let go so soon.

**Author's Note:**

> *technically* this fic is part of a larger verse i'm currently messing around with (stay tuned), but, for now, this is what's ready to see the light of day.
> 
> join me on [tumblr](http://yalenayardeen.tumblr.com) for more fun times and tragic #adulting


End file.
